Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season January-February 2016 | Page 21

his creative battle to forge a new musical
language within a conservative and often
hostile environment.
Beethoven launched his Heroic Period
with his Third Symphony, a work he
subtitled “Sinfonia eroica, composed to
celebrate the memory of a great man.” That
man was originally intended to be Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Beethoven initially
admired. However, when in 1804 he heard
that Napoleon had crowned himself
emperor, he tore the title page containing
the name “Bonaparte” from the score in a
fit of rage. “So he too is nothing more than
an ordinary man!” he reportedly cried.
“Now he also will trample all human rights
underfoot and only pander to his own
ambition.” The hero thereafter celebrated
in the “Eroica” became an ideal rather than
an actual human being.
Indeed, the Symphony itself was a heroic
act, shocking its first audiences and setting a new symphonic template for future
composers to emulate. In a work twice the
length of previous symphonies, Beethoven
had expanded 18th-century symphonic
structures beyond his contemporaries’
powers of comprehension. Even more challenging was the “Eroica’s” harmonic daring
and overall tone of aggression. It did not
seek to please and amuse its listeners but to
challenge and provoke them.
We hear the challenge in the two loud
E-flat chords that open the first movement. More than introductory gestures,
they are the germinal motive of the symphony. From them Beethoven builds the
repeated sforzando chords that we hear
a few moments later. Just before the end
of the exposition section, he adds teethgrinding dissonance to this mix, and in
the development section, this concoction
explodes in a shattering crisis.
The movement’s principal theme is a
simple swinging between the notes of an
E-flat-major chord that quickly stumbles
on a dissonant C-sharp. It will take the
rest of this giant movement to resolve
this stumble. So intense is Beethoven’s
forward propulsion that his themes never
have time to blossom into melody. In
fact, the most compelling theme waits
until the development, when oboes and
cellos introduce it as part of the recovery

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